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The Abel Prize 2010 has been awarded to John T. Tate from the University of Texas at Austin "for his vast and lasting impact on the theory of numbers". The honour puts Tate on a par with a Nobel Prize winner. In fact, the Abel Prize was established to make up for the fact that there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics.

The worrying decline of Arctic sea ice as a result of global warming is continuing. Last month the results of the Catlin Arctic Survey, an expedition to measure the thickness of Arctic sea ice, were presented at a press conference called by the World Wildlife Fund. On their 434km trek across the Arctic the explorers measured an average ice thickness of 1.77m. This confirms that the ice is getting thinner, but also means that they encountered mainly young ice, rather than the older and thicker multi-year ice they had expected.

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"There now is no doubt in the scientific community that the Arctic ice cap is melting, and that this is due to man-made global warming."This is nonsense.Man-made global warming is a theory which is increasingly at variance with the facts;there has been no statistically significant global warming for at least a decade. There is no consensus and just repeating a statement does not make it true.

"The Arctic Ocean covers 5,427,000 square miles. Catlin 2010 has seen maybe ten square miles of it, meaning they have sampled less than 0.0002% of the ice. They also choose to travel on refrozen leads because they are flatter and smoother, so their sampling is not random. No serious scientist would attempt to draw any conclusions about the quality of the ice based on a cherry picked sample representing less than 0.0002% of the Arctic" Taken from Watts up With That to provide some balance.

New treatments and drugs are tested extensively before they come on the market using randomised controlled trials (RCTs). We talk to David Spiegelhalter (Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk), Sheila Bird (Professor at the Medical
Research Council Biostatistics Unit), and Nigel Hawkes (journalist and director of Straight Statistics) about why RCTs are used and how they test if a new treatment works. You can also read an accompanying article.

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Mathematical mind reading on pi day

To celebrate pi day on the 14th of March 2010, a mathematician and a magician will attempt to pull off what promises to be the world's largest live online magic trick — and you can join in via Twitter!

The mathematician James Grime and the magician Brian Brushwood will exploit the magical power of mathematics to read your mind over the internet. Visit the pi day magic website for instructions on how to join up to this record-breaking attempt, and watch this space for an
explanation of how it's done to be published after the event.

How do you judge the risks and benefits of new medical treatments, or of lifestyle choices? With a finite health care budget, how do you decide which treatments should be made freely available on the NHS? Historically, decisions like these have been made on the basis of doctors' individual experiences with how these treatments perform, but over recent decades the approach to answering these questions has become increasingly rational. Statistics and maths are used not just to test new treatments, but also to measure such fuzzy terms as quality of life, and to figure out which treatments provide most "health for money".

While the decisions of health authorities affect all our lives, the underlying calculations are rarely discussed in the media. To explore these difficult decisions and the role of maths in evidence-based medicine, we have put together a package of six articles, three podcasts, a career interview and a classroom activity.

Calling all algebraic artists!

Everyone has the chance to create mathematical beauty as part of a competition during the Cambridge Science Festival. As part of the Imaginary exhibition of beautiful mathematical images and artwork taken from algebraic
geometry and differential geometry, visitors (both real and virtual) can create their own mathematical art.

By downloading the SURFER program, anyone can create images of algebraic surfaces by simple equations using the three spatial coordinates of x, y and z. For example, the equation x2 + y2 + z2 = 1 results in a sphere.

The competition requires creativity, intuition and mathematical skill in order to create equations yourself or to change given equations to produce beautiful images. The images are easily generated with the SURFER programme, and you can then upload your artwork to the competition gallery by 20 March. Everybody is invited to take part, including group entries from classes and families. The
entries will be judged by a distinguished panel including Sir Christopher Frayling (Royal College of Art and Arts Council England) and Conrad Shawcross (sculptor and artist-in-residence at the Science Museum, London).

So good luck to all aspiring artists, and if you need some inspiration why not browse through the Plus articles on maths and art.